MATHEMATICS

Part of the E8 matrix. The structure is described in the form of a vast matrix. Image: David Vogan / MIT

248-dimension maths puzzle solved

An international team of mathematicians has detailed a vast complex numerical "structure" which was invented more than a century ago.

Mapping the 248-dimensional structure, called E8, took four years of work and produced more data than the Human Genome Project, researchers said.
E8 is a "Lie group", a means of describing symmetrical objects.
The team said their findings may assist fields of physics which use more than four dimensions, such as string theory.
Lie groups were invented by the 19th Century Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie (pronounced "Lee").
Familar structures such as balls and cones have symmetry in three dimensions, and there are Lie groups to describe them. E8 is much bigger.
"What's attractive about studying E8 is that it's as complicated as symmetry can get", observed David Vogan from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.
"Mathematics can almost always offer another example that's harder than the one you're looking at now, but for Lie groups, E8 is the hardest one."

[Professor Vogan is presenting the results at MIT in a lecture entitled The Character Table for E8, or How We Wrote Down a 453,060 x 453,060 Matrix and Found Happiness.]